NASARAWA State Governor, Abdullahi Sule, says the Progressives Governors’ Forum (PGF) can’t do anything about the ministerial nomination ordeal of former Kaduna State governor, Nasir El-Rufai.
Sule, who is a member of the PGF, the governors’ forum of the All Progressives Congress (APC), also said El-Rufai has not left the ruling party despite his rejection as a ministerial nominee by the National Assembly in August 2023.
“El-Rufai has not left our party; he is still part of our party,” Sule said on Channels Television’s Politics Today programme on Wednesday monitored by News Point Nigeria.
“What led to his (El-Rufai’s) nomination, what led to his rejection by the Senate or by the security agencies, to be honest with you, are not issues we discussed either at the Progressives Governors’ Forum or even the Nigeria Governors’ Forum. They are not issues because what doesn’t concern us, we can do nothing about it.
“It is the prerogative of Mr President to nominate whoever should be his minister and he nominated. Also, there are agencies including the National Assembly that either confirm or reject and they rejected (him),” said the Nasarawa governor.
El-Rufai was one of the northern powerbrokers who insisted that the APC presidential ticket for the 2023 general elections be given to a southern candidate in line with the unwritten principle of rotation of power between the southern and the northern regions in Nigeria. This was after the eight-year tenure of President Muhammadu Buhari, from the North-West geopolitical zone.
El-Rufai, who was Kaduna governor between May 2015 and May 2023, was vocal in his choice of ex-Lagos governor Bola Tinubu as the flag bearer of the party in the last general elections.
The then Kaduna governor, alongside his northern colleagues, backed Tinubu against two other northern juggernauts who were also aspirants – – then Senate President Ahmad Lawan and ex-Jigawa governor, Mohammed Badaru.
Tinubu later clinched the APC ticket and was elected Nigeria’s president during the February 2023 presidential poll.
In Nigeria’s political turf where compensation politics has become almost a norm, Tinubu nominated El-Rufai as one of his ministers three months after his inauguration.
However, El-Rufai fell out with the movers and shakers in the current government and was rejected by the Senate during the ministerial screening process. The upper legislative chamber cited security reasons from the Department of State Services as one of the reasons for his rejection.
Since the August 2023 incident, El-Rufai has not been seen in a gathering of APC chieftains. The former governor has also not been seen around the Aso Villa, the seat of power, or near the president whom he vigorously campaigned for in the last poll.
Conversely, El-Rufai has been spotted with chieftains of the Social Democratic Party (SDP) fuelling defection rumours, which he has dismissed. El-Rufai’s relationship with his successor, Uba Sani, in Kaduna, has turned sour with the state assembly probing his eight-year administration for alleged corruption, an allegation denied by the ex-governor.